Heroes, Heroines and 3D Graphics - July Freebie Contest

Welcome everybody to the July Freebie Challenge - Heroes, Heroines and 3D Graphics

While trolling through the DAZ forum, I have learned that there are many artists that use DAZ, Poser, Blender, Vue, etc. for creating comic graphics and telling stories. In the freebie world there are shaders, characters, clothing, and objects made specifically for creating your favorite comic hero, or heroine, or cartoon character.

This month I would like you all to render a "comic" page or scene. It must contain an action or set of actions. This can be as simple as holding a gun to as complex as blowing up a building. You will be required to use toon or artistic shaders (at least 80% of the scene) or use the render engine option for cartoons. Flattening or outlining in postwork is expressly forbidden.

Since I am not really familiar with comics I have asked Eustace Scrubb to chime in and bail me out with tough questions and how-tos. He also has been most kind in helping me with developing the outline of how this month's contest will be conducted.

Throughout the first part of the month I will be creating scenes using the same requirements that are stipulated in this post to give you ideas and sources that I have found or that Eustace has pointed out.

The Rules:
1. Use a minimum of 8 freebies. One of these must be from Most Digital Creations. Free render engines are not a part of the required number of freebies.
2. Only use a maximum of 5 purchased items for the whole project.
3. Base figures (V4, K4, M4 and the Basic Male, Female, and Child morphs for Genesis) don’t count as a purchased item.
4. Postwork on scenes is limited to insertion of conversation balloons, signatures and borders. If you create a page with multiple scenes then postwork to compile the page layout is allowed. Use of Comic Life for this type of work is allowed for this month. You get a free trail usage of 30 days.
5. For setting up your scene you must use Bryce, Hexagon, Blender, Poser or DAZ. You can use any free render engine such as LUX to render the scene or the default engines of Bryce, Hexagon, Blender, Poser or DAZ. Other free renderers include, but are not limited to, Anim8or (the latest beta has a raytrace engine), POVRay, 3Delight standalone, or anything else the contestant can achieve the requisite comic-novel effect in without spending money on it. Free software used (bridges or renderers) do not count toward the requisite eight freebies.
6. Morphs will count toward a purchased item. Using a bridging tool, such as Reality to port the DAZ scene to Lux, counts towards a purchased item.
7. For an item to be considered free it must be offered as a freebie for the whole month of July. DAZ weekly freebies for the month can also be credited.
8. All links to freebies must work, and all freebies must be clearly seen to be accepted.
9. Enter as many times as you want.
10. This is a "G/PG" rated contest so DAZ TOU is strictly enforced. Dress your characters appropriately and no gruesomeness, i.e. spilling of guts, chopping off heads and such. Remember there are children that actively participate in the contest.
11. Because of the nature of the contest please, please be careful with copyright. If your render looks too much like Superman (or any other commercially recognized character), your render will be disqualified.
12. State the title of the piece, what software you used for setup, bridging/exporting (if any) and rendering (including shaders), and identify your 8 or more qualifying freebies with links to the freebies.

We will start on 1ST July - 00.01 DAZ time, and end 31 July 23.59

I am also looking for one more judge.
Judges:
Lord Ganthor
Robkelk
DollyGirl
???????

For my judges and contestants here are additional guidelines:

How did the piece convince me that it's from a Graphic Novel or a Comic Book,
Do I see both interplay between the elements and environment,
Is there trans-continuity: who are these people and what is this place? Where did they come from and where are they going from here?

These three elements can be effectively conveyed in a single image or two, even without narrative or dialogue, but they absolutely must be intentional. There doesn't have to be much visible background or environment at all, or not in every frame. It just has to belong if it is there. Example, yet another sky-high fistfight could as easily occur over the city as over open water or farmland, but someone falling is falling from something and to someplace, even if she's still above the clouds. If something is indoors, there is a reason for it to be indoors, and in the room or corridor it is in. If it is outdoors, it is in the country or in the city, at ground level or at height (also applies, to a lesser degree, to views from windows if any) for a reason. As to the "trans-continuity", the questions don't need to be answered by the picture, they merely need to be asked, implied. The answers to the questions need only be implied, one only needs to know that there is one. Also, the "Picture is worth a thousand words" cliché is at full validity here. The less dialogue and/or narration needed to convey the scene(s), the better.

Comments

So to kick off this event I have some things for you to consider the first one is:
Not An Entry (NAE) An example of taking a scene and using the toon render option in DAZ Studio 3 Advanced. This entry also points you to my first freebie, mat poses for Adam's Hmmm for V4+M4 prop. See item 18.

A note of apology to our fellow Poser users and a request. Due to my getting Poser only a month ago I was not able to really find some cool effects for comic scenes that Poser would use. Because of this all of the examples are for DAZ Studio. I do apologize to my fellow Poser users for this. My request is that if you know of an equivalent process for Poser of my DAZ example you jump right in and tell us about it. Like I said I have had Poser for only a month and there are lots of things to learn from this tool so I am really really interested in finding out about the different options available to Poser users. For you Brycer's, all I can say is that I am even less adept at using this software than I am Poser. I just learned about the Library. So that should tell you how far I got in creating a scene in Bryce. Thanks guys in advanced.

No count:
Text added with the script: mcjLabelizer by mCasual .
that use: ImageMagic by ImageMagick Studio .
Genesis with Basic Female, and Child morphs

Shaders based on DS4 Shader Mixer Toon preset but severely modified.
Scene built and rendered in DS4.0 pro.
Postwork: None, just to see if I could.

Cheers! Oom

Edit:
Some of the clothing was not that well visible so I have tweaked the shaders a bit and done a new rendered, as usual.

A very nice beginning for the contest Oom. Your render qualifiies. Check you PMs for the link and password to my shaders. So what do you think is going to happend next? Robbie has an adventure or Mom is really Superwoman making a day with her daughter. What is in the bag, huh?
Lonnie

You will be required to use toon or artistic shaders (at least 80% of the scene) or use the render engine option for cartoons.

While technically I'm looking forward to this contest, the above worries me somewhat. Might default to requiring one paid item for me.

ZamuelNow, That is fine if you want to use paid shaders. You are allowed 5 paid products and I did not stipulate that you had to use free shaders to do your render. So go for it. I would like to see some of the paid for toon shaders in action. You can mix and match free with paid. Later today I will be providing a demo on some free shaders so before you buy you may want to wait and see if these will be of any use to you.
Lonnie

Ok to use these shaders you will have to install the DAZ Studio 3 Default Shader Presets that digitani has updated for us. He has provided a readme file that explains where the files need to go. Placement of the scripts is the same location under DAZStudio4 as for DAZStudio3 if you are using DAZ Studio 4.

More conversation balloon options (Or the I don't have to do any postwork, Yay!!!)
As Oom has pointed out, Casual has a nifty tool that will put words on surfaces in DAZ. The text you see in the image was created using his script. It is real easy to install. What I did find was that the rounded edged conversation balloons would not take the image. I am not a modeler so I have no clue why they are being mulish. So if you want to play, here is the link to this really cool tool.

I have a question regarding the required number of freebies and paids.

If using the template, are the five paids "per scene" or "per page"? Considering that there are multiple frames, each a separate scene, I believe that some clarification is necessary. Also, with the template, how does one indicate specific frames as NAE versus entry?

And of course we all know that this particular challenge is designed specifically to stop certain Brycers that we may or not know. from taking part, :roll: :coolmad: ;-) hmm I shall have to go awy and have a word with my fav expert in the field of the DTE, to see iif he can suggest an easy and reliable way for this sort of thing to be reproduced in Bryce. :coolsmirk:

I have a question regarding the required number of freebies and paids.

If using the template, are the five paids "per scene" or "per page"? Considering that there are multiple frames, each a separate scene, I believe that some clarification is necessary. Also, with the template, how does one indicate specific frames as NAE versus entry?

Alexa ;)

Good questions Alexa, The intent of using a page is to allow the contestant a little more freedom to tell their story. With that in mind your "page" is either in the contest or not. There are no NAE portions of the page. As the ground work then the requirements for the page are the same as for a one scene render. So it is a little more restrictive for a page than a scene for paid for elements (total of 5) but not as restrictive on the number of freebies (total of 8) and gives you a little more freedom to develop the story you want to tell. I will upload an example entry of a page a little later today. So I hope I answered your question.
Lonnie

And of course we all know that this particular challenge is designed specifically to stop certain Brycers that we may or not know. from taking part, :roll: :coolmad: ;-) hmm I shall have to go awy and have a word with my fav expert in the field of the DTE, to see iif he can suggest an easy and reliable way for this sort of thing to be reproduced in Bryce. :coolsmirk:

So sorry Cho :down: :-S. But I know that certain Brycers are very resourceful and they will come up with something. It would be really cool if you could develop a process for generating toon in Bryce. I would be really interested in what you and LG can come up with. You do realize that by using Comic Life your scenes will turn into a toon scene so even if you could not get Bryce to generate the scene in toon style you have the option of using Comic Life to produce the graphic interpretation. You would just have to create materials inside Bryce to meet the requirement of 80% shader use. That should be easy since most simple toon shaders start with solid colors and Comic Life would put the edges on for you. See there you are! Solution achieved and you and LG can enter. I want to see "Da' Man" in toon style form!

In material room there is the "Set up Toon Render" option, which gives toon shader, only has to be modified a bit

Here are two renders, one without outline and one with outline, as you can see outline do not work good with transmapped objects

Thanks Krissy for stepping in and giving a demo with Poser! I am a newb with this program any helpful tips and tricks are most appriciated.
Lonnie

No Problem ;)

Also very important with the render ( at least it looks like it to me) Is not to have anything plugged into Alternative Diffuse, while applaying the shader. And after that it is nice to use some shade of grey as the colour ;)

And of course we all know that this particular challenge is designed specifically to stop certain Brycers that we may or not know. from taking part, :roll: :coolmad: ;-) hmm I shall have to go awy and have a word with my fav expert in the field of the DTE, to see iif he can suggest an easy and reliable way for this sort of thing to be reproduced in Bryce. :coolsmirk:

GASP!! They wouldn't do that...would they? I do recall seeing a tutorial (years back) about how to create certain settings to simulate flat shaded rendering in Bryce to achieve such an effect, but the results were far from satisfying. Truth to tell, I've never been really impressed with any shaders designed to simulate comics. Being a long time comics aficionado, collector, historian (and sometimes pen and paper artist), none of them ever looked quite right to me. Still, I'll be interested to try out any sort of ideas or different techniques that might be out there floating around. It's a great idea for a challenge (and one that's long been close to my heart) but given the technical limitations (and the less than satisfactory results, to me, anyway) I may sit this month out.

In material room there is the "Set up Toon Render" option, which gives toon shader, only has to be modified a bit

Here are two renders, one without outline and one with outline, as you can see outline do not work good with transmapped objects

Thanks Krissy for stepping in and giving a demo with Poser! I am a newb with this program any helpful tips and tricks are most appriciated.
Lonnie

No Problem ;)

Also very important with the render ( at least it looks like it to me) Is not to have anything plugged into Alternative Diffuse, while applaying the shader. And after that it is nice to use some shade of grey as the colour ;)

This is great Krissy! I love it when we share solutions. Now we need to get them Brycer's to come play!

And of course we all know that this particular challenge is designed specifically to stop certain Brycers that we may or not know. from taking part, :roll: :coolmad: ;-) hmm I shall have to go awy and have a word with my fav expert in the field of the DTE, to see iif he can suggest an easy and reliable way for this sort of thing to be reproduced in Bryce. :coolsmirk:

GASP!! They wouldn't do that...would they? I do recall seeing a tutorial (years back) about how to create certain settings to simulate flat shaded rendering in Bryce to achieve such an effect, but the results were far from satisfying. Truth to tell, I've never been really impressed with any shaders designed to simulate comics. Being a long time comics aficionado, collector, historian (and sometimes pen and paper artist), none of them ever looked quite right to me. Still, I'll be interested to try out any sort of ideas or different techniques that might be out there floating around. It's a great idea for a challenge (and one that's long been close to my heart) but given the technical limitations (and the less than satisfactory results, to me, anyway) I may sit this month out.

GASP!! They wouldn't do that...would they? I do recall seeing a tutorial (years back) about how to create certain settings to simulate flat shaded rendering in Bryce to achieve such an effect, but the results were far from satisfying. Truth to tell, I've never been really impressed with any shaders designed to simulate comics. Being a long time comics aficionado, collector, historian (and sometimes pen and paper artist), none of them ever looked quite right to me. Still, I'll be interested to try out any sort of ideas or different techniques that might be out there floating around. It's a great idea for a challenge (and one that's long been close to my heart) but given the technical limitations (and the less than satisfactory results, to me, anyway) I may sit this month out.

Ohh so sorry LG! :-S But maybe you will be "Da Man". The creator of the best Bryce Materials for Toon shading in the world! You are pretty handy. I was all set to see your pretty little SuperGirl show up too.

But you know, now that we know you are a comic buff and tried your hand at pen and pencil I want to see!
Lonnie

In material room there is the "Set up Toon Render" option, which gives toon shader, only has to be modified a bit

Here are two renders, one without outline and one with outline, as you can see outline do not work good with transmapped objects

Thanks Krissy for stepping in and giving a demo with Poser! I am a newb with this program any helpful tips and tricks are most appriciated.
Lonnie

No Problem ;)

Also very important with the render ( at least it looks like it to me) Is not to have anything plugged into Alternative Diffuse, while applaying the shader. And after that it is nice to use some shade of grey as the colour ;)

This is great Krissy! I love it when we share solutions. Now we need to get them Brycer's to come play!

We will try to figure out.
And you're welcome ;) I hope it will let people to experiment, and not get scared of entering the challenge ;)

Not An Entry (NAE) An example of creating a comic page using the product Comic Life, one of our sponsors for this month. You can download a fully functional version of the software for a trial period of 30 days. The four renders were done in DAZ Studio 3 Advanced.
Title: A Day With Dad

So let's talk a little more about Comic Life. It was a fun experience to create the page. There are lots of templates and options for you to choose from and if you want to do your own thing you can. What I did find was that if there is a template you like but you find the styles available for that template don't meet your needs you need to do a little trick to get access to other options. For my page I had selected the URBANA template but the picture style was black and white. So what I did was opened up a Blank Default Template with styles and saved it out as a new comic. Once I did that I went back to my URBANA page and imported the styles from the blank comic book I just saved. You will find the import function under Format->Import Styles... Have fun with this little program. It is very easy software to use and a whole bunch of fun making a story page.